SIXTEEN
s i m o n

Walking for fifteen minutes holding Dallas' hand felt like a dream. A dream he would have conjured up when he was fourteen and still unbelievably in love with her, continuing the hope that she had the same feelings for him. Hitting fifteen was where that love ended. It changed from a love to more of a fond memory, but here she was holding his hand and smiling at him like he held the secrets to the universe.

He hoped she carried on looking at him like that; he never wanted to forget it and he was afraid that, if she ever stopped, he would.

Now they'd reached the end of her street and she tows him behind her, dragging him along a dirt path into the trees and into the clutches of the gloom. It was dark, he had to look away from her to be careful of where he was putting his feet.

All at once, the trees parted into a clearing in which a body of water spanned. For where it was, it was a large expanse and the September sun shone off it so beautifully.

"How did you find this?" Simon asks, his hand cold as she lets him go.

Dallas walks to the water's edge, her toes centimetres from its lapping water. She shrugs her shoulders. "I don't know. I just found it when I was out one evening when Mum was- um - when I was bored."

Frowning slightly, but ignoring her slight mistake, Simon walks to her side to gaze out into the water. The setting was wonderful. He'd never known something so stunning was right on his doorstep, out here hidden between all the trees. Woven into the forest as a secret delight only the select few would ever know about.

"I came here a lot in the summer," Dallas explains, her hands knitting together in front of herself as if she were nervous, for a reason unknown to Simon. "Sometimes just to sit here and be alone, but a lot of the time I would swim in there." She laughs to herself, her head ducking slightly. "Ridiculous, I know. You must be thinking: why would she swim in here when she has a pool in in her house? Well, there's something not so satisfying about swimming in a pool built from the money of a dysfunctional family." She inhales sharply as if she herself couldn't believe what she'd just said.

"I think it's a nice place to come to swim," Simon says. "I can understand why you'd want to come here." He swallows, his nerves being pushed down as now he makes the move and takes Dallas' woven together hands in his, folding them in his own.

"There's so much I want to say to you," She rushes to say, turning to face him with sudden impulse. "But I don't know how."

"Think simple, nothing needs to be complicated."

"There's so much about me that's changed since we were young, Simon, it's- it's terrifying." For a moment, she chokes up. "Not just with me, but with what's around me. My boyfriend was cheating on me for the last year of our relationship, my mother is an alcoholic and my motivation for life is near enough dead. It's nothing like you knew it as, I hate it."

"It's ok, Dallas."

"No! It's not ok!" She exclaims, the first of the tears streaming in lines of silver down her cheeks. "Everything is falling apart around me and I can't hold it up anymore. I'm sorry I left you behind. That I gave up on our friendship. Honestly, I regret it more than anything else because clearly what we had was more than a friendship, but I chose James over you because he was popular. I was young and dumb."

In awe of everything she'd just said, Simon is silent. Her eyes dart over his face, begging for a response.

When he says nothing, she draws in a breath and carries on. "I just- I just had to tell you that before I disappeared again."

"Where are you going?" Simon blurts out, panicked by the prospect of another one of her disappearances.

"I'm going to see my dad in LA. He wants to talk to me in person about the divorce and what's happening with me, who I'll be living with, etcetera."

"When are you leaving?"

"Saturday."

"For how long?"

"A month."

"That long?"

"Now you understand why I had to talk to you," Dallas says and her fingers squirm beneath his. Not in an attempt for release, but as a seeming signal of discomfort within the conversation.

"I hope everything works out," Simon tells her, filling his words with genuinity.

Dallas' lips flicker up into a smile. An unsteady one, but a smile to say the least. "So do I."

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